[The Clock Winder seems to have] many of the virtues that we associate with "southern" writing—an easy, almost confidential directness, fine skill at quick characterization, a sure eye for atmosphere, and a special nostalgic humor—and none of its liabilities—sentimentality, a sometimes cloying innocence wise beyond its pretense, a tendency toward over-rich metaphor. The title character is 20-year-old Elizabeth, a strong figure who is both oddly timeless and perfectly conte...

[Anne Tyler] writes of lonely, unhappy, confused individuals who seek meaning, comfort, and a bit of human understanding and contact. Her closest progenitor is Carson McCullers, but I find Miss Tyler's work to be more wistful, delicate, and touching. In ["The Clock Winder"] one can not only witness and understand the incredible difficulty of human relationships but also the ambivalent burdens of family life. Parents cannot understand their children, and children cannot understand their ...

[At the end of] The Clock-Winder, the domestic settlement and content which have been achieved are seen slightly distanced, through the subdued distress of Peter, hitherto offstage. 'He's just back from Vietnam,' they say of him. 'Everyone murmured, as if that explained things.' Miss Tyler's book is quite apolitical…. [It] is warmly and shrewdly written, the characters are persuasive, and there is a salutary sense that bourgeois life is not necessarily rotten...